Dallas Mavericks Blog

Dirk Nowitzki practices with starters; will he start Saturday?

For the first time since he returned from arthroscopic knee surgery, Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki on Friday practiced with the first team.

Does that mean he will return to the starting lineup when the Mavericks host New Orleans Saturday night?

“He’s getting better all the time,” Coach Rick Carlisle said Friday. “It’ll happen at some point. I don’t know if it’s going to happen tomorrow or not, but he’s doing better and that’s very encouraging.”

Nowitzki played 29 minutes in Wednesday’s overtime loss at Miami, the most he has played since his Dec. 23 return against San Antonio. Carlisle said one of the the reasons he hasn’t been starting Nowitzki is that, with the training staff monitoring his time on the court, he would rather the bulk of those minutes be late in games.

“It really doesn’t matter,” Nowitzki said Friday, when asked if he is ready to start. “That’s really not the question. I finished the (Miami) game, felt decent for the 30 minutes I was out there. That’s really the major thing. Whether I’m starting or not really doesn’t matter. I guess we’ll make that decision tomorrow. We didn’t talk about it today.”

Nowitzki said the encouraging part about the 29 minutes he played against Miami was that it was the second game of a back-to-back. He had played 17 minutes the previous night at Washington.

He has played six games since returning. Nowitzki pointed out that the first time he played a back-to-back situation, Dec. 27 at Oklahoma City and Dec. 28 at home against Denver, “I looked awful,” against the Nuggets.

In that game against Denver, he shot 2 of 10 and scored five points.

“I was not only a step slow, but three steps slow. That was probably the worst I’ve looked. So for (the Miami game) being the second of a back to back, I thought it was great.”

In that Wednesday night game against Miami, Nowitzki scored a season-high 19 points and hit one of his patented one-leg fallaway jumpers to send the game into overtime.

“I don’t think the wind is a big deal, or wasn’t the last couple of games,” Nowitzki said. “It’s more the legs and the explosiveness and the push-off and switching directions. So that was the major problem I thought the last ten days I’ve been back.”

A side issue at the moment is that Nowitzki is fighting a case of the sniffles. A bug has circulated through the Mavericks locker room the past couple of weeks. Nowitzki said he had a fever before the Miami game.

“Getting over it now,” Nowitzki said between coughs and sniffs. “Looking forward to putting that behind me and looking forward to playing a good home game. I haven’t really had a good home game since I got back, so hopefully I can show the fans that I can still play a little bit.”